Season cadence

Monday launch, Thursday cut, Sunday winner

The week, hour by hour

Every season is exactly 168 hours. Three windows: launch, trading-only, finals. Two events: hard cut, settlement.

Times below are UTC and Monday-aligned.

1. Launch window — Mon 00:00 → Wed 00:00 (48h)

   Twelve launch slots open. First-come-first-served. Dynamic launch cost rises with each slot. Tokens are tradable as soon as they launch — going early gets you more pre-cut trading time, which is the reward for taking the early-slot risk.

   On Week 1, the protocol launches $FILTER into one of the 12 slots. No special treatment — same rules, same scoring, same risk.

2. Trading window — Wed 00:00 → Fri 00:00 (48h)

   Launch window closes. Full field of 12. No eliminations. HP rankings are live and updating. Last-slot launchers get a full 48 hours of equal-footing trading before the cut.

3. Hard cut — Fri 00:00 (hour 96)

   HP snapshot. Bottom six tokens are filtered, their LP is unwound, reserves are accumulated into the prize pool.

4. Finals — Fri 00:00 → Mon 00:00 (72h)

   The six survivors compete through the weekend. The leaderboard becomes central. The ticker narrates rank shifts and HP swings. Users trade around the cut line.

5. Settlement — Mon 00:00 (hour 168)

   Winner is selected. Rollover, hold bonus, POL, treasury, and mechanics allocations are finalized. Filtered holders receive rollover entitlements. The 14-day hold-bonus clock starts. The next season’s launch window opens immediately.

Colloquial summary: Monday launch, Thursday cut, Sunday winner. (The cut fires at end-of-Thursday / Friday 00:00; the winner is crowned at end-of-Sunday / Monday 00:00.)

Why this cadence

The original spec had the cut at hour 72 (24 hours after launch close), which gave slot-12 launchers only ~24 hours of trading before being eliminated — barely a chance. The locked cadence pushes the cut to hour 96, giving every token a fair, equal-footing 48-hour trading window. The 72-hour finals run through the weekend so the climax aligns with peak attention.

Two events per season — hard cut and settlement — is the minimum for the loop and the maximum for operational simplicity at MVP. There is no optional Day 5 soft filter. If finals feel quiet by Week 4, that decision is reversible.